Yes, you can. However, the success is highly depended on the information architecture. You need to plan in creating and arranging the categories & subcategories in such a way that it gives the best user experience. You can also cloud powered instant search tools like Algolia to make the product finding easier via search box.

You are competing against Amazon at that point, I would pick an underserved niche that you are most passionate / knowledgeable about and start there. For instance, drone after market accessories like stickers, lights, carrying cases, etc. Look for some trends using Google, Pinterest, etc. It's business 101, find a need and serve it. Your best bet is to focus and go very deep, than casting a wide net because you're resources will be spread to thinly. I'd be more than happy to help you narrow your list and am available any time for a call. Good luck!

Hi there. No matter where you are; Kickstarter, gofundme or indiegogo are really good crowdfunding options Take care

You need to consult a Lawyer before you go live. The thinking you are using did not work for Napster, Napster argued that they were not in control of how the users shared the content, they were just a vehicle to share it on. They lost in court, so that might be one precedent someone uses to sue you. I am not a lawyer, and I do not play one on TV, so please contact a lawyer, spend the little money it will cost you to have a two-hour conversation, and make sure you are covered.

You need to build trust in your vetting process, which means you actually need a good vetting process. Some ideas would be to have reviews of the potential guest from their facebook friends. Each review would have links to the reviewer's facebook profiles. Have links to the potential guest's own facebook profile, twitter, linkedin, etc. The more background links you provide, the easier it will be for the wedding couple to decide whether to invite the person or not. I don't know if you will ever get to the point of convincing a couple to invite a stranger to their wedding, but those things will at least get you closer to that possibility. If you'd like to brainstorm other ideas on the topic, let me know, best, Lee

You could probably use any Wordpress theme that had a design and feel you like. I would use a good events plugin such as Calendarize It. That plugin makes it easy to set up a nice calendar of events. You can make specific calendars for each country, category and city. They could view them all on one calendar or filter down to specific locations. You could even enter the venue information for the events as well. It's a pretty decent plugin. You can see an example of it working here: http://tvqma.org/schedule

You're describing the problem, it's setting, and your platform very vaguely. But from general principles, it's best to charge in the least noticeable way possible, so a % of the seller's commission would be the best method. That way it's invisible until a sale comes through, and even then, it occurs automatically as a deduction. If you charge a subscription fee you're requiring the seller to actively pull out their card and send you money, a barrier that's much harder to get them to cross than the less noticeable, passive and automatic deduction from a sale. If you'd like to discuss the issue with respect to the specifics of your particular platform and its market, let me know and we can set up a call, best, Lee

If you have not tried buddypress have a look at it and see if it can do for you what you are looking for.

This has been done many times over. You can create an RSS feed from these sources, yes.

Yes, that can definitely be a problem if you are not redirecting all of your traffic to one or the other. The easiest way to solve this is to add a simple redirect to your site's .htaccess file. Here's an example of how to redirect all non-www traffic to www: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Editing your .htaccess file can be a little tricky, so be sure to do a little platform-specific research first before you do this as you could easily break your site!

Try: https://wordpress.org/plugins/members/

This is more of a subscription rather than a membership. In you mind, what are the benefits of "membership" that differentiate it from a simple subscription?

Go the National Housewares Association, they publish industry information by industry sector within housewares.

Get in touch with datacusp(dot)com

Hello, I believe that you may be over-complicating this a little. Typically, you need to have either citizenship or some other legal presence within a country to open a checking account within it. I would recommend establishing accounts in your own country first and then using ATMs in other countries to withdraw money, as "wiring" money internationally can be expensive. If you just need to pay for expenses while abroad, look instead into using credit cards that have no foreign transactions fees such as the Capital One Venture Card. If you really need accounts in multiple countries, you will likely need to incorporate within them. As for accepting payments in different currencies. Your best bet will probably be 2Checkout or Stripe Atlas to start. Stripe Atlas will probably have lower fees but will take more technical expertise to get up and running. Best of luck to you!

I'll urge you to reconsider. Speaking slowly and clearly in a presentation goes a long way in retaining attention and interest from your audience. I'll quote Paul Graham of Y-Combinator here "Err on the side of speaking slowly. At Rehearsal Day, one of the founders mentioned a rule actors use: if you feel you're speaking too slowly, you're speaking at about the right speed." Presentations can feel "slow" if they lack passion or enthusiasm - but increasing the speed will do little to help on that front. If you haven't yet - record a video of yourself delivering your pitch - it will tell you a lot about where things are falling flat.

Social engagement requires more than posting information about your product or service. You need to look for ways to be helpful to people without trying to drive them to your site. Look for opportunities to build relationships first and foremost. Once people see that you're helpful they'll begin to be interested in what you do and offer, but rarely before then. On the issue of your site, you may have some optimization/usability issues that need to be looked at. High bounce rates are indicative of improper messaging and a site that just isn't meeting visitor's needs and expectations.

Good Morning, Your question may appear to be a simple one. As a CPA, CGMA, and business performance expert for over 25 years now, I get questions like this from my clients often. Your options are not clear from your question, however, I will steer to you to where you need to look to determine what options are available to you: 1) Your company structure will determine some of your options. This means are you a Corp (C corp or S corp), LLC, partnership/multi-member LLC. Due to the 10% held by others, I'm sure your not a sole proprietor. 2) Any operating agreement you may have will also define more of your options. Operating agreements can hold many terms of how you operate your company, including ownership changes, so I cannot give you any advice here without knowing if you have one and what's in it, but the contents will flush out more options. 3) In the absence of an operating agreement (this is always possible) you may need to take "politically and legally prudent" steps. That means you'll need to work out any sale of your stake with your fellow partners. 4) Once you've flushed out your options available to you, you can then set the steps you need to take. 5) Your steps will need resources to help you. Business resources such as guidance on the sound business steps to take, and negotiations to conduct, while keeping your business rolling, as well as legal resources to put any agreements on paper. Because this is complex, by legal and business measures, I encourage you to call me for more accurate information to help you. I hope this helps!

There are advantages to both approaches. Using a theme such as Avada or X (my recommendation) will make the process faster and guarantee consistency, however the downsides are bloated code and potentially slow page load times. If you don't have a large or media-heavy site, this may not be an issue. Choose a theme that has a solid reputation for customer support and theme updates. Look at all the demos and be sure that you can mix and match the different elements that you like. And keep in mind that they all come with their own page builders and shortcodes, so you will need to choose a theme you want to stick with until you are ready to completely re-design. The pros of developing a custom theme are having more streamlined code and total control over the updates. The downsides would be an increased time/cost factor, a need to have someone monitor software changes and make necessary updates, and further development for future functional needs. Additional attention will need to be placed on required plugin compatibility. If you use ecommerce solutions, payment processors or email marketing opt ins, you'll need to be sure the custom code plays nice with them. Both approaches should allow you to create a totally customized design and user experience. Additional note regarding using a pre-coded theme: Be sure to check the compatibility with your required plugins as well. Most of them take the major ones into consideration, but if you aren't sure, reach out to the developers and ask ahead of time. Good luck! Feel free to contact me if I can help further. ~ Nicky

I highly recommend Mandi Atkins: http://veteransnationallending.com/staff/mandi-atkins/

I've been down this road before (two custom CMS platforms built over the years), and to play devil's advocate here: do you really need to build a custom CMS? What problem are you up against that aren't being solved by existing solutions? If those problems aren't fundamental, how much time and money will be saved by creating plugins for an existing CMS? I know the temptation to start from scratch, but if this is something to be used in production, the todo list is staggering: you'll need user authentication, security on the front and back end, admin interfaces, plugin infrastructure for extensibility, theming (if this will be used for multiple clients), third party integrations — and that's all before you get into really annoying and notoriously finicky shit like media uploads and i18n. If it's for learning or a hobby, go nuts, but if you're planning to use this with clients, save yourself the heartache and late nights and use something established and open source. Join the community and help fix existing solutions' shortcomings — that's a bigger overall contribution to the world. Good luck!

If you got 5000 sites to link to your site using the same keyword you'll likely be flagged for spam and attempting to manipulate the search results. That is an old-school attempt at SEOing a site that Google and the other search engines have already developed algorithmic answers to. There are three aspects to building up your search rankings. 1) On-Site Optimization: Your site has to be coded in a way that is search and mobile friendly. You need to optimize your content for searcher's topical interest's (keywords), and give your visitors a great on-site experience by focusing on usability issues. 2) Content: You need to create and publish awesome content that fills the needs of the audience you're trying to reach. Write blog posts and create other forms of content that answer questions, provide tips, and map out solutions that truly illustrate that you are an authority on the topic. 3) Social Engagement / Links: Links are an important part of the algorithm, but getting a bunch of sites to link to you using keywords is the wrong approach. You need to be engaging on social media and (to a far lesser extent) socializing your content above. But the more you engage, the more others will socialize your content for you, which is where authority is really built.

A PR Agency will (should) price this based on value to the client. You would be wise to do the same and avoid the hourly-rate blackhole. Work with your client to determine the value of the deliverable to them, and price accordingly. Internally, you should now how much you want to earn per hour, and how many hours it will take you. This is for your information only, not the client's knowledge. If you'd like to further discuss value-pricing for your service, I'm happy to help. Drop me a line, -Shaun

The biggest question you'll have to answer at this point is whether you and the founder can get along. You've already highlighted issues with the founder but does this bother you? Are both your goals aligned and do your values agree with him/her? In a previous experience, I brought someone on whom I didn't know much about - only that his skills matched what I was looking for. However, only after a few months, he decided to leave as he didn't agree with the new direction we were taking. Yet, there was never any opposition when the idea was first brought up. The team is one of the most critical things at the beginning of every startup. You'll want to be in an environment where everyone is open, honest and can execute to the best of their ability. I don't believe that this is your only opportunity - there are plenty of opportunities all around to those who seek it.

You can find startup job / cofounder opportunities at these sites: http://jobs.startupxplore.com/ https://angel.co/jobs https://underdog.io/candidates (choose the 'remote' option) http://www.startuphire.com/ If you'd like to talk about startup culture in general, or a specific idea you have and how to move it forward, let me know. In any case, best of luck, Lee